Real Estate

May 25 – U.S. banking group Goldman Sachs has signed a deal to lease 1.6 million square feet of office space in Bangalore, in the biggest recorded commercial property deal to date in India. The space is equivalent to nine full sized football fields.

The deal will see the bank initially taking up 1 million square feet followed by another 600,000 square feet in two years. The space, housed in a purpose-built block of three buildings for Goldman, is located on Bangalore’s Sarjapur Outer Ring Road, and is being built on 14 acres by a local developer. Completion is set for 2017. Continue reading →

Apr. 13 – The average Indian working in Mumbai would need to save every rupee of their income for over 300 years in order to purchase a decent-sized apartment in a prime location in the city, according to a cost of living report recently released by Knight Frank LLP and income estimates based on purchasing power parity made by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

The report shows that a 100 square meter luxury residence in downtown Mumbai costs about Rs. 5.8 crore, or slightly over 308 times the average annual income in the city. Meanwhile, the average worker in Shanghai would need to spend a touch over 233 times the average annual wage to buy a similar apartment in the city, ranking it second behind Mumbai. Continue reading →

Apr. 4 – Mumbai and Shanghai, as the financial centers of the world’s two biggest emerging economies, have witnessed their property markets go through a similar path over the past decade – seeing an astonishing price surge, experiencing the turbulence during and after the Global Financial Crisis, carrying the similar concerns over housing bubbles that exacerbate domestic inflation, and facing the social sentiment of the masses that cannot afford the expensive properties.

Mumbai is turning into one of the most expensive cities to live in among all the cities in the developing world. And as the Indian government has started to take measures to curb inflation, many property developers are now faced with fund shortages. A number of analysts and economists believe Mumbai’s property market will see an oversupply between 2012 and 2013, and predict that real estate prices will go down in the near future. Similar with India, the Chinese government has also issued a series of restrictive regulations recently in a bid to suppress property prices. However, both the Chinese people and the Shanghai local government do not seem to be very confident that the measures can thoroughly clear the bubble in the housing market. Whether Shanghai’s property market will finally become more affordable to people still remains a question. Continue reading →

Dec. 16 – A new study by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and India’s Urban Land Institute, a global non-profit education and research institute has stated that India leads the pack of top real estate investment markets in Asia for 2010.

The report, which provides an outlook on Asia-Pacific real estate investment and development trends,says that India,particularly Mumbai and Delhi, are good destinations. Residential properties are viewed as more promising than other sectors with Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore on top the pack in the hotel ‘buy’ prospects. Continue reading →